Sony memory card pricing hurts them in many ways. It's one of the many reasons I won't buy a Sony camera (no, it's not that I can't pirate pictures or whatever). My favorite shop's prices:
2GB SD card: $8 but I've seen them as low as $6 before. 4GB SD card: $13 8GB SD card: $19 16GB SD card: $33 32GB SD card: $85
2GB MS Duo card: $27 4GB MS Duo card: $35 8GB MS Duo card: $60 16GB MS Duo card: $150 32GB MS Duo card: $250
You nailed it! But even then it costs sigificantly less:
Assuming, 2 weeks vacation and a week worth of paid holidays, and that you shut down on friday for the weekend, you get:
49 weeks * 4 days * 16h * 89W * $0.10/kWh = an incredible $28 savings per year saved by shutting down everyday. That's also assuming your PC is running at full power too, no S3 standby or anything (otherwise you'd be saving more like $5 a year).
Even if your PC boots in a minute, and that you cost your employer $7/hr with all the "overhead" (yeah right), then they're losing money by having you wait for that single minute.
As much as I think \ was a stupid choice, I don't think the keyboard layouts are the real issue here.
In fact, I think many keyboard layouts themselves are to blame when it comes to programming. Or at least they're due for an upgrade of sorts, as they are a relic from the typewriter era and not meant for programming specifically (and plain suck at it)
Case in point: the canadian french keyboard layout. Every useful symbol you might use several times per line i.e. <>{}/\'"@ and such, are *all* moved to strange locations to make place for accents. For example,/\| are all moved to where the tilde is supposed to be -- to the left of the "1" key. Don't ask me where the tilde went either! Many common chars require you to use "alt char" too (@ is alt char+2). It's like 3x as much effort writing code with that wretched keyboard layout... It even makes everyday computing tasks suck. I see people who only used that keyboard layout their whole life still struggle with it on a daily basis...
It's sadly less work to write the whole thing with a plain old en-us keyboard layout, then go over it again, and put in accents where you need them if you're localizing some stuff.
So if we start avoiding to use characters that might be a pain to type on certain keyboard layouts, then we'd pretty much rule out every single character out there unfortunately.
1:100 seems to be around what I've seen in most places too, give or take a little.
Last job, we had around 2500 users & desktops, and we were a dozen IT people handling it all. So 1:200.
-One IT manager overseeing everything -One webmaster -One network guru (cisco guy) -One programmer (in-house apps, helping the webmaster with web apps, writing some scripts, etc) -One person doing app repackaging (installshield) and updating disk images and such -A couple guys answering the phone -A guy looking after the servers primarily -four techs
Most people shared knowledge, and knew IT stuff pretty good in general, so when someone went on vacation, we could handle the basics of their job just fine (i.e. other guys that knew networking, each tech could handle some extra phone calls for a day, etc)
I've never seen anywhere near 1:7, that's just incredible.
Tons of reasons: -IE actually DOESN'T render things quite right, IE 8 (beta) is the closest thing they have now that's anywhere close to "standard compliant", at least in terms of CSS support. In a LOT of cases, pages only render OK in IE because of numerous CSS hacks used to make it display like every other browser, or a IE-only stylesheet is fed to it -IE is a great way to load your system full of spyware (ActiveX junk, BHO's, toolbars and what not) -Firefox has tons of very useful addons, like Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Firebug, etc -Far better standard support using other browsers, see this page for a quick overview -IE7 is the worst memory hog of them all, look here and from what I've seen IE8 is only worse -IE7 has the worst interface of them all, with the home button to the extreme right, the standard "toolbar" hidden by default (File/Edit/View/...), and everything else -No session saver (when IE crashes, kiss all your tabs goodbye) etc
There's NOTHING good to be said about IE. It's the worst POS to ever come out of Redmond (worse than WinME + Bob + Clippy combined). The only reason to still use it is for apps (like some banks) that require it, because they use ActiveX components or such.
Not the GP, but I'll answer anyways, being in the exact same situation.
Yes, the code itself is always written in english (things like like a "for" loop are never translated to "pour" -- the language stays the same). What changes is the naming of all the variables, functions and comments.
We keep it all in english as well, because everybody knows it half decently -- all around the world (not just our shop, but also customers and anyone else who might eventually use it). I don't find french to be real good at technical stuff either, they generally try to translate some common computer terms, but they sound just weird to me, or sometimes they just seem devoid of any sense, or extremely verbose (e.g. "trackball driver" becomes "gestionnaire de peripherique de dispositif de pointage a bille" -- WTF?). Also, I always have my keyboard set to US-EN because the placement of the characters we always need (like ><[]{} and such) is very convenient compared to the FR-CA keyboard (slash becomes é, backslash is the right alt key + the key with the tilde on it, etc)
I also find it very weird you never run into multi-lingual teams. I would assume you have a fair amount of citizens who speak spanish, and a fair number of Indian programmers (with all those H1B visa we keep hearing about) and what not. In Canada french/english is very common. But in many cities like Montreal, you also have lots of other ethnicities...
Even just in english (Candian/US/British "variants" of it) you run into some problems, like Color/Colour and such.
As for the string literals, that's easy, everything is in resource files already (for localization... or localisation), so spell checking of that is a non-issue.
Because I think that's very much the case for Visual Studio too. Stock VS2005 is usable, but look at some of the "plugins" made by jetbrains (ReSharper and dotTrace -- from the same guys that Make IntelliJ), devexpress (Refactor! and CodeRush), wholetomato (Visual Assist X) and a bunch of others.
I haven't seen such great plugins for any other IDEs.
-Server box: NAT/Firewall/P2P (bittorent/emule mostly), IIS, Apache, SQL Server Express, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. Also acts as a media server (4TB storage currently, mostly mpeg4 files and some mp3s). Also used for VMWare Server. Has X10 controller connected to it too (to command some modules). Shares laser printer too.
-HTPC. HDTV Tuner and DVB card. Plays videos (stored on the server) and PVRs stuff. Connects to HDTV. Recently added a XBOX's HD DVD drive for HD DVDs.
-Gaming box w/ fast video card and all. 'nuff said (not counting consoles: XBOX, PS2, XBOX360 and a Wii as of last week)
-Family PC. Encarta, Office, surf web (check email, youtube, google maps, wikipedia, check recipes, etc), play mp3's and "refill" mp3 players, etc. Used to be the gaming box, but people were fighting for it... Sometimes watch movies on it (when someone else is watching another one on the HDTV) - it has a nice 5.1 speaker set and half decent 19" monitor so it's OK.
-Programming box. Visual Studio 2005. Eclipse. All the usual stuff. Plus various embedded/electronics dev stuff and associated hardware (lots of rs232/interfacing stuff, an eprom programmer, pic/avr programmers, etc). Also serves as my main box for photo raw processing/pano stitching/retouching/tagging/sorting work (2 nice monitors, wacom tablet, nikon coolscan, etc).
-Laptop. Used while outside or traveling (empty the 2 cameras' SD/CF memory cards and check photos, backup on CDs, play mp3's and movies in hotels, surf web, etc). The kids often use it to watch movies on long car rides too (2 Extra batteries!) At home used to check recipes and play mp3's in the kitchen (for whoever is cooking) or as a picture frame of sorts (photo slideshow).
-Workstation. Somewhat of a "ghetto" box. Used to install all these tiny apps that one only seems to use once (often trials), and that can screw up your box (I keep a ghosted baseline image handy). Used to test things out. Used a lot to reencode videos (DVDs, DVB rips, etc) in mpeg4 to put on the media server, keeping it busy for hours at a time.
-Linux box. Mostly to toy around with Linux. Asterisk, LAMP stack, and a couple other things. Perhaps that's the only box I wouldn't mind getting rid of as it hardly ever gets used (the only things I ever seem to do with it these days is updating it)
Then there's the work laptop (must use theirs to VPN in, can't use home PC -- same story).
Vista drivers are just a very small part of the problem with Creative's junk.
When I bought a SB live, I was running Win 2k Pro. AC3 passthru was broken for pretty much as long as I ran that OS.
Then XP came out. XP drivers? Can't have that. You had to install the old and incompatible VxD-based Win9x drivers (which did BSOD my system half the time), then somehow apply the new WDM drivers on top of that. Retarded.
Even today, they still suck. Want app for the live drive's remote control? Download it off their website. Oops, it says "can't find previous version" so it won't install (do they still expect me to use the Win9x drivers disc that shipped with it?) Same for the Play Center app...
Now that Vista's out, same story about drivers. "Just spend a ridiculous amount on a X-Fi you don't need" is their answer. But I've *NEVER* got a single good driver for the 350$ card I already bought in about 6 years, what makes me think me new card will make this any better?
Oh, and drivers are just a small part of the problem.
Adding a SB live to a system with a KT133 chipset made it BSOD like every 5 minutes with Win98. Even the PCI latency "fixes" didn't solve this (just BSOD'ed every 15 minutes instead). Had to buy a new motherboard because of that...
Their promised ASIO support in their drivers for the SB Live? I'm still waiting!
Non-standard interconnects! I'm still extremely pissed off about this. I bought a set of Cambridge Soundworks speakers (Creative's own) -- the DTT3500 along with it. It comes with a short cable. The plugs on that? A 1/8" mini plug on the card - like a normal stereo earphone, BUT with an extra ring (3 pole). Good luck finding one like that anywhere, I never managed. At the other end of that cable, you have a totally non-standard *9pin* mini-din. Good luck finding extensions for that! Even Creative won't sell you any. I called them, and they told me to buy buy one at Radio Shack... I would, if they used NORMAL / standard plugs! I wonder how their X-Fi breakout box connects - likely another weird plug you can't find anywhere should your cable go bad.
So much stuff... And the new cards still suck. No Dolby Digital Live. Very poor connections: on the "basic" X-Fi, the spdif out is same plug as microphone input! So if you plan to use the digital output and that you might need a microphone sometime, then you need something like the X-Fi Elite Pro (300$ instead of 70$).
Way too much problems - more than I've ever had with any other computer part. I've upgraded to an M-Audio card since then. I'll consider using Creative's junk again once THEY stat paying ME to use it. Even the onboard Realtek HD audio on my cheapo HP tower is far better (good drivers, good sound quality, standard plugs and all).
Even if he actually wants books, I don't see why he even needs to ask here. You have *NO* idea how many times I've answered this question before. On various forums, on newsgroups and what not. I could do a lengthy writeup about which books and why, or copy/paste a canned answer every time, but I've essentially tired of answering it over and over again. It's like the old "what distro should I use?" question.
Go to groups.google.com, and search for "C# book recommendations" and variants - I've answered it there like a dozen times at least -- there's currently 1310 hits for that expression! The information is out there, easy to search. No point in answering it over and over again. Try the same on some programming forums. Some programming community sites have relevant stuff too. Check amazon's best sellers in that category. You can probably borrow some (from friends or a public library) and also check the books at your local book store.
Besides, which books *you* really want might be different than the ones I want. There's books on every aspect of programming in anything.NET-related (the languages, the framework, the CLR, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, etc). It depends which parts you want to learn about most. Some books are for total beginners, others are targeted at experienced developers. And most people tend to prefer some publishers over another, so it's a bit of a personal choice too.
BTW, there are some free training videos at MSDN. Some other companies have a few too, or reasonably priced ones (e.g. learnvisualstudio.net). The MSDN library here (1940MB download). Lots of sample code. Starter kits. The MSDN and architecture mags. The.NET SDK. Various fun places like coding4fun (why not have some fun while you're learning?) MS eLearning often has some free courses. There's tons of webcasts. I've seen some pretty good offers too (like watch 3 webcasts, and receive a copy of VS 2005 Standard for free). Tons of community sites like codeproject.com. There's just too many resources out there to list (and hyperlink) them all here, so I'm working on a site that lists such resources.
I've been wondering what ATI is up to lately. I always liked their offerings, but for the last while it seems they hardly have anything worthwhile (at my usual shopping places, all the nvidia-based offerings are cheaper, faster, and have FAR more selection!). Perhaps they're working mostly on their chipsets instead, but they're REALLY falling behind on video cards right now.
And about AMD's price cuts, it's a good thing, but too little too late IMO. When a 200$ Core 2 Duo E6300 can easily be OC'ed to be faster than the EX6800 (which is already faster than ALL of the Athlon64 offerings at any price AFAIK - including the pricey and power-hungry FX74), there's little incentive to buy AMD right now.
Even for home setups! I've looked at replacing my current monitors (nothing wrong with them) with some nice Dell Ultrasharp LCDs. But 4 new monitors, a new 4 port KVM switch with DVI and preferably USB too (some PC mfgs are dropping PS/2 plugs), 4 new video cards... That's already quite the expense just to have flat screens.
But the real problem is with my dual monitor setup. There are very few 4 port KVM switches with dual DVI, and even less that also have USB, and they are VERY expensive. Add the cable sets (god knows they like to overcharge on those newfangled cables).
The cheapest dual DVI KVM I've found (KEEMUX-P2D-4) is 580$ (haven't found one with USB at all). Add 10 DVI cables (2 for monitors, and 2 per PC) @ 14$/ea for 6' ones (140$), 8 cables for keyboard/mice, 4 new video cards (~500$ for something half decent like a 7600GT), plus 4 new displays (a few thousands)... With some nice displays, tax, shipping and all, one quickly reaches 4500$ or more (depends on which displays one gets - I wanted two 19" and two 24" dell ultrasharps, so 2300$ CDN) And here's hoping that the fscking KVM switch would work OK with logitech trackballs -- most only seem to work right using MS' pointing devices which I very much dislike.
Wish I could afford to replace 'em, but since there's nothing wrong with my existing setup... At least if I knew DVI was here to stay, but with all the upcoming changes (HDMI, HDCP, UDI, DisplayPort and god knows what else they'll think of next week), there's *NO* way I'm spending almost 5000$ to have to replace it all in 2 years again. Come to think of it, I almost bought a Dell ultrasharp a year ago or so, the nice 30" which was on special (800$ off IIRC). I didn't buy it because I would also have needed a dual link DVI video card to run it (an extra 400$ expense back then), and I'm glad I didn't, because it doesn't (didn't?) support HDCP, and it would have been useless for HDTV stuff (half the reason to get it in the first place).
Sometimes it pays to be a late adopter seemingly. Switch prices might come down, LCD displays sure are becoming cheaper now (and FAR better), and in a while we might even have a winner for the next HD format (HD DVD or Blu-Ray).
For Win XP yes, that is, until they make a new installer for it, based on Vista's (been hearing about this lately), which they will do mainly to support the new deployment techniques replacing RIS. Vista doesn't need a floppy for drivers (the installer uses WinPE, and can load drivers from just about anything, including USB memory sticks). Meanwhile, you can integrate driver packs (including mass storage adapters) or just your own drivers on your XP install disc, and you won't have to provide a floppy anymore. It's not as hard as it may sound, and it only takes a few minutes to do. Go to MSFN if you need information on things like this, and lots more (unattended installs too, which save a lot of time)
Personally, I haven't had a floppy in any of my PCs for at least 5 years. For the odd time I needed a win98 boot floppy or such, then I have floppy images on several bootable DVDs (there's lots of them out there if you're too lazy to do it yourself or don't know how).
However, I still have an old floppy drive (and a trusty LS120) somewhere on a shelf, for the odd time it might come in handy (rescue data, reflash a BIOS from dos - although I prefer to do that from a hard disk as floppies are unreliable, and things like that).
That's the best advice! Others have said "check other good web pages and try to imitate them" or "read some tutorials", but that's coming from people that don't really know what web design encompasses. Web design - like design for any medium - is FAR more than that.
You'd have to learn about ALL KINDS of artsy stuff, things like using color palettes to your advantage, fairly advanced typography (most people have NO idea how much stuff there is to learn right there), how to make visually appealing stuff in general, how to use white space properly, and so much more.
Ideally you'd have to take art classes, perhaps specialized web-oriented courses, read a lot of books (many classics) and magazines (like Before & After or countless others), read hundreds of articles on countless web design oriented websites (like alistapart, 456bereastreet, etc)
And there's MANY other things one should look into, such as usability and accessibility.
Then you can worry about knowing how to use photoshop and other apps (flash, etc) to make things (and rounded button tutorials or such)
In short, too much stuff to learn, much like if a designer wanted to become a "real" programmer (gotta learn OOP, various languages, XML, databases, various libs and frameworks, etc). You usually don't want to spend that much time learning something that often seems not so important or not very interesting, and it's not usually worth it (being a *good* programmer is hard enough, and there's already WAY too much stuff to learn). And if you don't learn it in depth, you're just not going to produce very good results (e.g. another bland website that's much like all the others, and nothing like what you see on csszengarden).
Try designing some site logos and such (even just on paper). You'll see it's not as easy as it seems!
I stick to what I do best (programming), and let the designer guys take care of the rest (even though I can handle some basic design stuff just fine).
It's NOT WinXP. In fact, it's not "just another version of windows" at all! It's a network appliance (based on win2003, but it's not 2003 either), aimed primarily at backups and sharing files. Headless and all that. Pretty well made seemingly - uses the Single Instance Storage (SIS) so only one copy of the same file is kept across multiple backups, and very expendable (better than RAID). There was a video about it on channel9 yesterday.
I'd get one if I didn't already have a server to do this stuff (and more).
Yeah, I bet most of these linkers are from sites catering to web designers trying to explain the latest fad.
As far as traffic to different encyclopedias, it's not surprising at all. I have the Encarta DVD (and older versions of Britannica and Universalis) and see no reason to consult it online - I don't think I've ever tried it once. But my main reason to use wikipedia is because it has *DIFFERENT CONTENT* - not because it's available online or for free. e.g. Encarta has articles about classic music and such, whereas on wikipedia you'll find lots of articles over other types of music and musicians that you wouldn't normally find elsewhere, like say, Chris Barnes (from death metal groups CC & SFU) -- try finding things like that on Encarta or Britannica! But then again, the DVD-based encyclopedias have videos, games, sounds, lots of photos and other multimedia content you won't find online on wikipedia, not counting specialized versions like MS Student, which my kids also love. They have different content and content types, so they *COMPLEMENT* each other. They're not directly competing IMO (even though others will surely disagree on that one).
Actually, I did look at replacing my dual 21" setup for a Dell 30" UltraSharp widescreen LCD (2560x1600). Nice big screen with high resolution and all. Even the price was not too bad as they had it on sale (like 600$ off).
But then I realized I also needed one of the very few DVI dual-link video cards which weren't very cheap back then (over 200$ for the cheapest)
But this thing can't really be shared on a KVM switch easily (find a KVM with dual DVI ports, and preferably with spdif while you're at it - good luck!) Try sharing that between 4 PCs, even if you have the right video cards in each PC. Even such a KVM existed, 4 new special video cards + special KVM would likely cost more than the 30" display!
Needless to say I'm still using my pair of 21's.
Likely, Apple's display would be just as much of a PITA.
It's nice in a way, but by saying nobody uses it, he's almost right (in the same sense as "nobody uses ogg").
Yes, it's faster than 100mbit ethernet. But then again, not every PC has firewire - only the recent ones do, and often those also have gigabit ethernet as well (even the kids' old socket A Asus A7V880 motherboard has it).
Gigabit uses rather standard cables (cat 5e or better) which is not exactly hard to find. Whereas for firewire networking I had to buy a "special" cable (2 male plugs - not your average firewire cable used by fw devices), which I've very rarely seen (I've only seen my own).
Firewire is already not very well known by the average consumer besides Mac users seemingly (I've been asked "what's that weird plug?" so many times). Combine that with the fact most wouldn't know they can network that way, various so-so drivers (Unibrain's are the best buy they're not free), and a special cable requirement, it's no wonder "nobody uses it". And that's disregarding FW is limited to a connection between 2 PCs only (can't just plug 'em all in one big switch permanently unlike gbit ethernet)
Speed is pretty good though (although fw tends to peak CPU a bit) - almost as good as gigabit: gigabit is limited by the average PC's HD transfer speeds (sustained, not peak) and such.
It was great for transfers of large files between 2 PCs next to each other like large AV files back when gigabit was too expensive, but I've given up on that (gigabit has come down a LOT in price). I only use it [rarely] with my DSLR to shoot tethered (no USB2 on it) and to capture DV every now and then. My firewire iBot2 webcam died of one too many falls on the floor and got replaced with a nicer USB2 model.
There's no need to go back to the stone age. Just use prepared statements/parameterized queries (along with the usual stuff like validating user input client *AND* server-side)
You're 100% right. And not only they haven't locked out security apps, but they're ALSO securing windows pretty good, even though most people here refuse to admit it.
-windows now comes with a basic firewall, and it's enabled by default -UAC (yes, it's a PITA right now but it works) -DEP enabled by default (if supported by hardware) -NX bit support (not DEP) is much improved with Vista - actually preventing code from being run in data areas and also offers address space layout randomization -the [highly annoying] Kernel Integrity Protection in win2003 sp1 - not only you can't write to the lower 1MB of memory (no problem there), but you can't even READ IT! Locked! Forget about reading \Device\PhysicalMemory. ZwSystemDebugControl? Won't help. You will need to write a kernel mode driver (oh, joy!), which will popup a warning message when loading - even if you set driver signing policy off! -Kernel Patch Protection in Vista -Network Access Protection -Service Hardening (they even had started disabling a few with XP SP2 IIRC) -code access security built in.net framework (not that they enforce its usage though) etc.
Sure, it won't be perfect, but it's getting much more secure already.
Same thing here in Canada. Last book I checked I wasn't saving 10%.
But that alone wouldn't be too bad, as one can likely find some other stuff to load it up with.
What I'm worried about is how good the software will be to read PDFs and such (not like the whole page can fit on the tiny screen, and what about graphics? etc). They say you should resize them yourself if you want them to look better on the tiny screen - not something I like to do. And if there is conversion required, how good will that be (for say, CHM files perhaps - which are used by many publishers). If it doesn't display the PDF & CHM files in a readable/useful format, then I really have no use for it.
Battery life seems OK, build quality might be good(?), but memory? I'd expect more than 64MB at 350$ - I have some PDF files bigger than this! One will need to spend more on a memory card for it to be useful. And like they say, it plays music, but it's not like there's much space for that either along with your book(s). I'm only hoping it's not their own weird memory card format, but this is Sony we're talking about... And seemingly it uses it's own proprietary/closed BBeB format for some things (and can be DRM'ed) - I like my information to be Free (as in speech).
Anyhow. I really wanted one of those a couple years ago, but at 350$ + memory card + shipping + tax (over 500$ Canadian), and coming from Sony - the rootkit guys, I think I'll skip. Hopefully someone else comes up with a similar device.
Intel graphics are perhaps lame for gamers who always need the latest 3D performace. But for everybody else - which is the majority of users, including PCs used at work by most - it's more than sufficient. It'll even play some games just fine (just not the very latest with high details).
I got Intel GMA video on one of my motherboards, and I must say I'm VERY pleased with it. Yes, it uses system memory - all of 8MB, leaving "only" 2040MB to the system. It has some of the best drivers ever. And it's dirt cheap. I personally see no need to spend over 50$ more for a separate video card with poor performance - at that price here, you'd be getting like a GeForce MX440, which is quite slower (and I've had nothing but troubles with nvidia drivers). IIRC, those video chipsets cost like 4$ to make. The only potential issue? It's the "older" generation, right before they changed their mind for Aero glass support for Vista, so it's not able to do that (big deal, no plans on running Vista on that PC - and even if I wanted to, I could just buy a video card for it).
I'm not a huge fan of Intel (especially netburst), but Intel video is great.
Come singularity I want to be able to buy music, not just rent it.
Just because YOU want to buy only doesn't mean everybody else wants to. Just like some people prefer to rent DVDs instead of buying 'em. Nobody prevents you from buying.
But I'd rather these services died a market death than a technolocial one.
Why want them to die at all? Because less options is a good thing? Perhaps you want netflix-like services to die too? Because people renting contents is a bad thing from your standpoint seemingly...
Then maybe the media companies would realize that people don't want to pay for something continually.
You're not paying for the songs directly... You're paying for a monthly service, with tons of great new contents every month, totally unlimited. That's EXACTLY like saying "people don't want to pay for a netflix-like service continually" (and LOTS of people seem pretty happy to do just that - or just like millions of people pay every month for cable TV and such, stop paying, and you have nothing left either)
And, well, if other idiots think that renting music is better than buying than maybe they should be allowed too.
Yeah, all them idiots who think renting DVDs is better than buying than [sic] maybe they should be allowed too.
Big deal. Some people don't mind paying a few bucks for a month's worth of unlimited music, from a ridiculously huge selection (both on their portable mp3 players and home PCs). That full month of music cost pretty much the same as renting a couple DVDs from my local blockbuster (thousands of hours of music from a huge library, or ~3h worth of movies). Such a bad deal... Great for finding what new CDs are worth buying, finding new interesting stuff and such.
No one's forcing you to pay for a montly rental service, but others understand what it is (I don't think I'm buying the music there any more than I'm buying movies from netflix when using their service) and are more than happy to use it for what it is. Don't like the monthly service? Fine, just don't use it and just buy it instead. No one's preventing you from doing so...
Even if they claimed lesser or no dependance, I still wouldn't try it. I am addicted to morphine, but it's not a big problem, as I'm unlikely to stop taking it anytime soon (chronic pain). And like you said, the new painkiller might turn out to be just addictive (or maybe even more - like was discovered before for other drugs). And I don't like being a guinea pig for new drugs. I've taken a fair amount of vioxx before, which seemingly wasn't so good for me, even though previous studies likely showed it was harmless or such. Morphine has been in use for like... forever? We pretty much already know all the bad stuff about it. And the new drugs just might have some very bad side effects too. I already have decent pain control from a rather safe drug, causing hardly any side effetcts (cost is relatively resonable too - I can only see the new stuff cost even more). I don't see any reason to switch anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony memory card pricing hurts them in many ways. It's one of the many reasons I won't buy a Sony camera (no, it's not that I can't pirate pictures or whatever). My favorite shop's prices:
2GB SD card: $8 but I've seen them as low as $6 before.
4GB SD card: $13
8GB SD card: $19
16GB SD card: $33
32GB SD card: $85
2GB MS Duo card: $27
4GB MS Duo card: $35
8GB MS Duo card: $60
16GB MS Duo card: $150
32GB MS Duo card: $250
You nailed it! But even then it costs sigificantly less:
Assuming, 2 weeks vacation and a week worth of paid holidays, and that you shut down on friday for the weekend, you get:
49 weeks * 4 days * 16h * 89W * $0.10/kWh = an incredible $28 savings per year saved by shutting down everyday. That's also assuming your PC is running at full power too, no S3 standby or anything (otherwise you'd be saving more like $5 a year).
Even if your PC boots in a minute, and that you cost your employer $7/hr with all the "overhead" (yeah right), then they're losing money by having you wait for that single minute.
As much as I think \ was a stupid choice, I don't think the keyboard layouts are the real issue here.
In fact, I think many keyboard layouts themselves are to blame when it comes to programming. Or at least they're due for an upgrade of sorts, as they are a relic from the typewriter era and not meant for programming specifically (and plain suck at it)
Case in point: the canadian french keyboard layout. Every useful symbol you might use several times per line i.e. <>{}/\'"@ and such, are *all* moved to strange locations to make place for accents. For example, /\| are all moved to where the tilde is supposed to be -- to the left of the "1" key. Don't ask me where the tilde went either! Many common chars require you to use "alt char" too (@ is alt char+2). It's like 3x as much effort writing code with that wretched keyboard layout... It even makes everyday computing tasks suck. I see people who only used that keyboard layout their whole life still struggle with it on a daily basis...
It's sadly less work to write the whole thing with a plain old en-us keyboard layout, then go over it again, and put in accents where you need them if you're localizing some stuff.
So if we start avoiding to use characters that might be a pain to type on certain keyboard layouts, then we'd pretty much rule out every single character out there unfortunately.
1:100 seems to be around what I've seen in most places too, give or take a little.
Last job, we had around 2500 users & desktops, and we were a dozen IT people handling it all. So 1:200.
-One IT manager overseeing everything
-One webmaster
-One network guru (cisco guy)
-One programmer (in-house apps, helping the webmaster with web apps, writing some scripts, etc)
-One person doing app repackaging (installshield) and updating disk images and such
-A couple guys answering the phone
-A guy looking after the servers primarily
-four techs
Most people shared knowledge, and knew IT stuff pretty good in general, so when someone went on vacation, we could handle the basics of their job just fine (i.e. other guys that knew networking, each tech could handle some extra phone calls for a day, etc)
I've never seen anywhere near 1:7, that's just incredible.
Tons of reasons:
-IE actually DOESN'T render things quite right, IE 8 (beta) is the closest thing they have now that's anywhere close to "standard compliant", at least in terms of CSS support. In a LOT of cases, pages only render OK in IE because of numerous CSS hacks used to make it display like every other browser, or a IE-only stylesheet is fed to it
-IE is a great way to load your system full of spyware (ActiveX junk, BHO's, toolbars and what not)
-Firefox has tons of very useful addons, like Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Firebug, etc
-Far better standard support using other browsers, see this page for a quick overview
-IE7 is the worst memory hog of them all, look here and from what I've seen IE8 is only worse
-IE7 has the worst interface of them all, with the home button to the extreme right, the standard "toolbar" hidden by default (File/Edit/View/...), and everything else
-No session saver (when IE crashes, kiss all your tabs goodbye)
etc
There's NOTHING good to be said about IE. It's the worst POS to ever come out of Redmond (worse than WinME + Bob + Clippy combined). The only reason to still use it is for apps (like some banks) that require it, because they use ActiveX components or such.
Not the GP, but I'll answer anyways, being in the exact same situation.
Yes, the code itself is always written in english (things like like a "for" loop are never translated to "pour" -- the language stays the same). What changes is the naming of all the variables, functions and comments.
We keep it all in english as well, because everybody knows it half decently -- all around the world (not just our shop, but also customers and anyone else who might eventually use it). I don't find french to be real good at technical stuff either, they generally try to translate some common computer terms, but they sound just weird to me, or sometimes they just seem devoid of any sense, or extremely verbose (e.g. "trackball driver" becomes "gestionnaire de peripherique de dispositif de pointage a bille" -- WTF?). Also, I always have my keyboard set to US-EN because the placement of the characters we always need (like ><[]{} and such) is very convenient compared to the FR-CA keyboard (slash becomes é, backslash is the right alt key + the key with the tilde on it, etc)
I also find it very weird you never run into multi-lingual teams. I would assume you have a fair amount of citizens who speak spanish, and a fair number of Indian programmers (with all those H1B visa we keep hearing about) and what not. In Canada french/english is very common. But in many cities like Montreal, you also have lots of other ethnicities...
Even just in english (Candian/US/British "variants" of it) you run into some problems, like Color/Colour and such.
As for the string literals, that's easy, everything is in resource files already (for localization... or localisation), so spell checking of that is a non-issue.
Because I think that's very much the case for Visual Studio too. Stock VS2005 is usable, but look at some of the "plugins" made by jetbrains (ReSharper and dotTrace -- from the same guys that Make IntelliJ), devexpress (Refactor! and CodeRush), wholetomato (Visual Assist X) and a bunch of others.
I haven't seen such great plugins for any other IDEs.
I doubt I could even get by with "just" 5!
-Server box: NAT/Firewall/P2P (bittorent/emule mostly), IIS, Apache, SQL Server Express, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. Also acts as a media server (4TB storage currently, mostly mpeg4 files and some mp3s). Also used for VMWare Server. Has X10 controller connected to it too (to command some modules). Shares laser printer too.
-HTPC. HDTV Tuner and DVB card. Plays videos (stored on the server) and PVRs stuff. Connects to HDTV. Recently added a XBOX's HD DVD drive for HD DVDs.
-Gaming box w/ fast video card and all. 'nuff said (not counting consoles: XBOX, PS2, XBOX360 and a Wii as of last week)
-Family PC. Encarta, Office, surf web (check email, youtube, google maps, wikipedia, check recipes, etc), play mp3's and "refill" mp3 players, etc. Used to be the gaming box, but people were fighting for it... Sometimes watch movies on it (when someone else is watching another one on the HDTV) - it has a nice 5.1 speaker set and half decent 19" monitor so it's OK.
-Programming box. Visual Studio 2005. Eclipse. All the usual stuff. Plus various embedded/electronics dev stuff and associated hardware (lots of rs232/interfacing stuff, an eprom programmer, pic/avr programmers, etc). Also serves as my main box for photo raw processing/pano stitching/retouching/tagging/sorting work (2 nice monitors, wacom tablet, nikon coolscan, etc).
-Laptop. Used while outside or traveling (empty the 2 cameras' SD/CF memory cards and check photos, backup on CDs, play mp3's and movies in hotels, surf web, etc). The kids often use it to watch movies on long car rides too (2 Extra batteries!) At home used to check recipes and play mp3's in the kitchen (for whoever is cooking) or as a picture frame of sorts (photo slideshow).
-Workstation. Somewhat of a "ghetto" box. Used to install all these tiny apps that one only seems to use once (often trials), and that can screw up your box (I keep a ghosted baseline image handy). Used to test things out. Used a lot to reencode videos (DVDs, DVB rips, etc) in mpeg4 to put on the media server, keeping it busy for hours at a time.
-Linux box. Mostly to toy around with Linux. Asterisk, LAMP stack, and a couple other things. Perhaps that's the only box I wouldn't mind getting rid of as it hardly ever gets used (the only things I ever seem to do with it these days is updating it)
Then there's the work laptop (must use theirs to VPN in, can't use home PC -- same story).
Vista drivers are just a very small part of the problem with Creative's junk.
When I bought a SB live, I was running Win 2k Pro. AC3 passthru was broken for pretty much as long as I ran that OS.
Then XP came out. XP drivers? Can't have that. You had to install the old and incompatible VxD-based Win9x drivers (which did BSOD my system half the time), then somehow apply the new WDM drivers on top of that. Retarded.
Even today, they still suck. Want app for the live drive's remote control? Download it off their website. Oops, it says "can't find previous version" so it won't install (do they still expect me to use the Win9x drivers disc that shipped with it?) Same for the Play Center app...
Now that Vista's out, same story about drivers. "Just spend a ridiculous amount on a X-Fi you don't need" is their answer. But I've *NEVER* got a single good driver for the 350$ card I already bought in about 6 years, what makes me think me new card will make this any better?
Oh, and drivers are just a small part of the problem.
Adding a SB live to a system with a KT133 chipset made it BSOD like every 5 minutes with Win98. Even the PCI latency "fixes" didn't solve this (just BSOD'ed every 15 minutes instead). Had to buy a new motherboard because of that...
Their promised ASIO support in their drivers for the SB Live? I'm still waiting!
Non-standard interconnects! I'm still extremely pissed off about this. I bought a set of Cambridge Soundworks speakers (Creative's own) -- the DTT3500 along with it. It comes with a short cable. The plugs on that? A 1/8" mini plug on the card - like a normal stereo earphone, BUT with an extra ring (3 pole). Good luck finding one like that anywhere, I never managed. At the other end of that cable, you have a totally non-standard *9pin* mini-din. Good luck finding extensions for that! Even Creative won't sell you any. I called them, and they told me to buy buy one at Radio Shack... I would, if they used NORMAL / standard plugs! I wonder how their X-Fi breakout box connects - likely another weird plug you can't find anywhere should your cable go bad.
So much stuff... And the new cards still suck. No Dolby Digital Live. Very poor connections: on the "basic" X-Fi, the spdif out is same plug as microphone input! So if you plan to use the digital output and that you might need a microphone sometime, then you need something like the X-Fi Elite Pro (300$ instead of 70$).
Way too much problems - more than I've ever had with any other computer part. I've upgraded to an M-Audio card since then. I'll consider using Creative's junk again once THEY stat paying ME to use it. Even the onboard Realtek HD audio on my cheapo HP tower is far better (good drivers, good sound quality, standard plugs and all).
Even if he actually wants books, I don't see why he even needs to ask here. You have *NO* idea how many times I've answered this question before. On various forums, on newsgroups and what not. I could do a lengthy writeup about which books and why, or copy/paste a canned answer every time, but I've essentially tired of answering it over and over again. It's like the old "what distro should I use?" question.
.NET-related (the languages, the framework, the CLR, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, etc). It depends which parts you want to learn about most. Some books are for total beginners, others are targeted at experienced developers. And most people tend to prefer some publishers over another, so it's a bit of a personal choice too.
.NET SDK. Various fun places like coding4fun (why not have some fun while you're learning?) MS eLearning often has some free courses. There's tons of webcasts. I've seen some pretty good offers too (like watch 3 webcasts, and receive a copy of VS 2005 Standard for free). Tons of community sites like codeproject.com. There's just too many resources out there to list (and hyperlink) them all here, so I'm working on a site that lists such resources.
Go to groups.google.com, and search for "C# book recommendations" and variants - I've answered it there like a dozen times at least -- there's currently 1310 hits for that expression! The information is out there, easy to search. No point in answering it over and over again. Try the same on some programming forums. Some programming community sites have relevant stuff too. Check amazon's best sellers in that category. You can probably borrow some (from friends or a public library) and also check the books at your local book store.
Besides, which books *you* really want might be different than the ones I want. There's books on every aspect of programming in anything
BTW, there are some free training videos at MSDN. Some other companies have a few too, or reasonably priced ones (e.g. learnvisualstudio.net). The MSDN library here (1940MB download). Lots of sample code. Starter kits. The MSDN and architecture mags. The
I've been wondering what ATI is up to lately. I always liked their offerings, but for the last while it seems they hardly have anything worthwhile (at my usual shopping places, all the nvidia-based offerings are cheaper, faster, and have FAR more selection!). Perhaps they're working mostly on their chipsets instead, but they're REALLY falling behind on video cards right now.
And about AMD's price cuts, it's a good thing, but too little too late IMO. When a 200$ Core 2 Duo E6300 can easily be OC'ed to be faster than the EX6800 (which is already faster than ALL of the Athlon64 offerings at any price AFAIK - including the pricey and power-hungry FX74), there's little incentive to buy AMD right now.
Even for home setups! I've looked at replacing my current monitors (nothing wrong with them) with some nice Dell Ultrasharp LCDs. But 4 new monitors, a new 4 port KVM switch with DVI and preferably USB too (some PC mfgs are dropping PS/2 plugs), 4 new video cards... That's already quite the expense just to have flat screens.
But the real problem is with my dual monitor setup. There are very few 4 port KVM switches with dual DVI, and even less that also have USB, and they are VERY expensive. Add the cable sets (god knows they like to overcharge on those newfangled cables).
The cheapest dual DVI KVM I've found (KEEMUX-P2D-4) is 580$ (haven't found one with USB at all). Add 10 DVI cables (2 for monitors, and 2 per PC) @ 14$/ea for 6' ones (140$), 8 cables for keyboard/mice, 4 new video cards (~500$ for something half decent like a 7600GT), plus 4 new displays (a few thousands)... With some nice displays, tax, shipping and all, one quickly reaches 4500$ or more (depends on which displays one gets - I wanted two 19" and two 24" dell ultrasharps, so 2300$ CDN) And here's hoping that the fscking KVM switch would work OK with logitech trackballs -- most only seem to work right using MS' pointing devices which I very much dislike.
Wish I could afford to replace 'em, but since there's nothing wrong with my existing setup... At least if I knew DVI was here to stay, but with all the upcoming changes (HDMI, HDCP, UDI, DisplayPort and god knows what else they'll think of next week), there's *NO* way I'm spending almost 5000$ to have to replace it all in 2 years again. Come to think of it, I almost bought a Dell ultrasharp a year ago or so, the nice 30" which was on special (800$ off IIRC). I didn't buy it because I would also have needed a dual link DVI video card to run it (an extra 400$ expense back then), and I'm glad I didn't, because it doesn't (didn't?) support HDCP, and it would have been useless for HDTV stuff (half the reason to get it in the first place).
Sometimes it pays to be a late adopter seemingly. Switch prices might come down, LCD displays sure are becoming cheaper now (and FAR better), and in a while we might even have a winner for the next HD format (HD DVD or Blu-Ray).
For Win XP yes, that is, until they make a new installer for it, based on Vista's (been hearing about this lately), which they will do mainly to support the new deployment techniques replacing RIS. Vista doesn't need a floppy for drivers (the installer uses WinPE, and can load drivers from just about anything, including USB memory sticks). Meanwhile, you can integrate driver packs (including mass storage adapters) or just your own drivers on your XP install disc, and you won't have to provide a floppy anymore. It's not as hard as it may sound, and it only takes a few minutes to do. Go to MSFN if you need information on things like this, and lots more (unattended installs too, which save a lot of time)
Personally, I haven't had a floppy in any of my PCs for at least 5 years. For the odd time I needed a win98 boot floppy or such, then I have floppy images on several bootable DVDs (there's lots of them out there if you're too lazy to do it yourself or don't know how).
However, I still have an old floppy drive (and a trusty LS120) somewhere on a shelf, for the odd time it might come in handy (rescue data, reflash a BIOS from dos - although I prefer to do that from a hard disk as floppies are unreliable, and things like that).
That's the best advice! Others have said "check other good web pages and try to imitate them" or "read some tutorials", but that's coming from people that don't really know what web design encompasses. Web design - like design for any medium - is FAR more than that.
You'd have to learn about ALL KINDS of artsy stuff, things like using color palettes to your advantage, fairly advanced typography (most people have NO idea how much stuff there is to learn right there), how to make visually appealing stuff in general, how to use white space properly, and so much more.
Ideally you'd have to take art classes, perhaps specialized web-oriented courses, read a lot of books (many classics) and magazines (like Before & After or countless others), read hundreds of articles on countless web design oriented websites (like alistapart, 456bereastreet, etc)
And there's MANY other things one should look into, such as usability and accessibility.
Then you can worry about knowing how to use photoshop and other apps (flash, etc) to make things (and rounded button tutorials or such)
In short, too much stuff to learn, much like if a designer wanted to become a "real" programmer (gotta learn OOP, various languages, XML, databases, various libs and frameworks, etc). You usually don't want to spend that much time learning something that often seems not so important or not very interesting, and it's not usually worth it (being a *good* programmer is hard enough, and there's already WAY too much stuff to learn). And if you don't learn it in depth, you're just not going to produce very good results (e.g. another bland website that's much like all the others, and nothing like what you see on csszengarden).
Try designing some site logos and such (even just on paper). You'll see it's not as easy as it seems!
I stick to what I do best (programming), and let the designer guys take care of the rest (even though I can handle some basic design stuff just fine).
It's NOT WinXP. In fact, it's not "just another version of windows" at all! It's a network appliance (based on win2003, but it's not 2003 either), aimed primarily at backups and sharing files. Headless and all that. Pretty well made seemingly - uses the Single Instance Storage (SIS) so only one copy of the same file is kept across multiple backups, and very expendable (better than RAID). There was a video about it on channel9 yesterday.
I'd get one if I didn't already have a server to do this stuff (and more).
Yeah, I bet most of these linkers are from sites catering to web designers trying to explain the latest fad.
As far as traffic to different encyclopedias, it's not surprising at all. I have the Encarta DVD (and older versions of Britannica and Universalis) and see no reason to consult it online - I don't think I've ever tried it once. But my main reason to use wikipedia is because it has *DIFFERENT CONTENT* - not because it's available online or for free. e.g. Encarta has articles about classic music and such, whereas on wikipedia you'll find lots of articles over other types of music and musicians that you wouldn't normally find elsewhere, like say, Chris Barnes (from death metal groups CC & SFU) -- try finding things like that on Encarta or Britannica! But then again, the DVD-based encyclopedias have videos, games, sounds, lots of photos and other multimedia content you won't find online on wikipedia, not counting specialized versions like MS Student, which my kids also love. They have different content and content types, so they *COMPLEMENT* each other. They're not directly competing IMO (even though others will surely disagree on that one).
The email you'll receive:
Unless you meant is your account hasn't been created yet.
Actually, I did look at replacing my dual 21" setup for a Dell 30" UltraSharp widescreen LCD (2560x1600). Nice big screen with high resolution and all. Even the price was not too bad as they had it on sale (like 600$ off).
But then I realized I also needed one of the very few DVI dual-link video cards which weren't very cheap back then (over 200$ for the cheapest)
But this thing can't really be shared on a KVM switch easily (find a KVM with dual DVI ports, and preferably with spdif while you're at it - good luck!) Try sharing that between 4 PCs, even if you have the right video cards in each PC. Even such a KVM existed, 4 new special video cards + special KVM would likely cost more than the 30" display!
Needless to say I'm still using my pair of 21's.
Likely, Apple's display would be just as much of a PITA.
It's nice in a way, but by saying nobody uses it, he's almost right (in the same sense as "nobody uses ogg").
Yes, it's faster than 100mbit ethernet. But then again, not every PC has firewire - only the recent ones do, and often those also have gigabit ethernet as well (even the kids' old socket A Asus A7V880 motherboard has it).
Gigabit uses rather standard cables (cat 5e or better) which is not exactly hard to find. Whereas for firewire networking I had to buy a "special" cable (2 male plugs - not your average firewire cable used by fw devices), which I've very rarely seen (I've only seen my own).
Firewire is already not very well known by the average consumer besides Mac users seemingly (I've been asked "what's that weird plug?" so many times). Combine that with the fact most wouldn't know they can network that way, various so-so drivers (Unibrain's are the best buy they're not free), and a special cable requirement, it's no wonder "nobody uses it". And that's disregarding FW is limited to a connection between 2 PCs only (can't just plug 'em all in one big switch permanently unlike gbit ethernet)
Speed is pretty good though (although fw tends to peak CPU a bit) - almost as good as gigabit: gigabit is limited by the average PC's HD transfer speeds (sustained, not peak) and such.
It was great for transfers of large files between 2 PCs next to each other like large AV files back when gigabit was too expensive, but I've given up on that (gigabit has come down a LOT in price). I only use it [rarely] with my DSLR to shoot tethered (no USB2 on it) and to capture DV every now and then. My firewire iBot2 webcam died of one too many falls on the floor and got replaced with a nicer USB2 model.
There's no need to go back to the stone age. Just use prepared statements/parameterized queries (along with the usual stuff like validating user input client *AND* server-side)
You're 100% right. And not only they haven't locked out security apps, but they're ALSO securing windows pretty good, even though most people here refuse to admit it.
.net framework (not that they enforce its usage though)
-windows now comes with a basic firewall, and it's enabled by default
-UAC (yes, it's a PITA right now but it works)
-DEP enabled by default (if supported by hardware)
-NX bit support (not DEP) is much improved with Vista - actually preventing code from being run in data areas and also offers address space layout randomization
-the [highly annoying] Kernel Integrity Protection in win2003 sp1 - not only you can't write to the lower 1MB of memory (no problem there), but you can't even READ IT! Locked! Forget about reading \Device\PhysicalMemory. ZwSystemDebugControl? Won't help. You will need to write a kernel mode driver (oh, joy!), which will popup a warning message when loading - even if you set driver signing policy off!
-Kernel Patch Protection in Vista
-Network Access Protection
-Service Hardening (they even had started disabling a few with XP SP2 IIRC)
-code access security built in
etc.
Sure, it won't be perfect, but it's getting much more secure already.
Same thing here in Canada. Last book I checked I wasn't saving 10%.
But that alone wouldn't be too bad, as one can likely find some other stuff to load it up with.
What I'm worried about is how good the software will be to read PDFs and such (not like the whole page can fit on the tiny screen, and what about graphics? etc). They say you should resize them yourself if you want them to look better on the tiny screen - not something I like to do. And if there is conversion required, how good will that be (for say, CHM files perhaps - which are used by many publishers). If it doesn't display the PDF & CHM files in a readable/useful format, then I really have no use for it.
Battery life seems OK, build quality might be good(?), but memory? I'd expect more than 64MB at 350$ - I have some PDF files bigger than this! One will need to spend more on a memory card for it to be useful. And like they say, it plays music, but it's not like there's much space for that either along with your book(s). I'm only hoping it's not their own weird memory card format, but this is Sony we're talking about... And seemingly it uses it's own proprietary/closed BBeB format for some things (and can be DRM'ed) - I like my information to be Free (as in speech).
Anyhow. I really wanted one of those a couple years ago, but at 350$ + memory card + shipping + tax (over 500$ Canadian), and coming from Sony - the rootkit guys, I think I'll skip. Hopefully someone else comes up with a similar device.
I got mod points, but I'd rather reply.
Intel graphics are perhaps lame for gamers who always need the latest 3D performace. But for everybody else - which is the majority of users, including PCs used at work by most - it's more than sufficient. It'll even play some games just fine (just not the very latest with high details).
I got Intel GMA video on one of my motherboards, and I must say I'm VERY pleased with it. Yes, it uses system memory - all of 8MB, leaving "only" 2040MB to the system. It has some of the best drivers ever. And it's dirt cheap. I personally see no need to spend over 50$ more for a separate video card with poor performance - at that price here, you'd be getting like a GeForce MX440, which is quite slower (and I've had nothing but troubles with nvidia drivers). IIRC, those video chipsets cost like 4$ to make. The only potential issue? It's the "older" generation, right before they changed their mind for Aero glass support for Vista, so it's not able to do that (big deal, no plans on running Vista on that PC - and even if I wanted to, I could just buy a video card for it).
I'm not a huge fan of Intel (especially netburst), but Intel video is great.
Come singularity I want to be able to buy music, not just rent it.
Just because YOU want to buy only doesn't mean everybody else wants to. Just like some people prefer to rent DVDs instead of buying 'em. Nobody prevents you from buying.
But I'd rather these services died a market death than a technolocial one.
Why want them to die at all? Because less options is a good thing? Perhaps you want netflix-like services to die too? Because people renting contents is a bad thing from your standpoint seemingly...
Then maybe the media companies would realize that people don't want to pay for something continually.
You're not paying for the songs directly... You're paying for a monthly service, with tons of great new contents every month, totally unlimited. That's EXACTLY like saying "people don't want to pay for a netflix-like service continually" (and LOTS of people seem pretty happy to do just that - or just like millions of people pay every month for cable TV and such, stop paying, and you have nothing left either)
And, well, if other idiots think that renting music is better than buying than maybe they should be allowed too.
Yeah, all them idiots who think renting DVDs is better than buying than [sic] maybe they should be allowed too.
Big deal. Some people don't mind paying a few bucks for a month's worth of unlimited music, from a ridiculously huge selection (both on their portable mp3 players and home PCs). That full month of music cost pretty much the same as renting a couple DVDs from my local blockbuster (thousands of hours of music from a huge library, or ~3h worth of movies). Such a bad deal... Great for finding what new CDs are worth buying, finding new interesting stuff and such.
No one's forcing you to pay for a montly rental service, but others understand what it is (I don't think I'm buying the music there any more than I'm buying movies from netflix when using their service) and are more than happy to use it for what it is. Don't like the monthly service? Fine, just don't use it and just buy it instead. No one's preventing you from doing so...
Even if they claimed lesser or no dependance, I still wouldn't try it. I am addicted to morphine, but it's not a big problem, as I'm unlikely to stop taking it anytime soon (chronic pain). And like you said, the new painkiller might turn out to be just addictive (or maybe even more - like was discovered before for other drugs). And I don't like being a guinea pig for new drugs. I've taken a fair amount of vioxx before, which seemingly wasn't so good for me, even though previous studies likely showed it was harmless or such. Morphine has been in use for like... forever? We pretty much already know all the bad stuff about it. And the new drugs just might have some very bad side effects too. I already have decent pain control from a rather safe drug, causing hardly any side effetcts (cost is relatively resonable too - I can only see the new stuff cost even more). I don't see any reason to switch anytime soon.